If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I'm not shocked about this. I would imagine that the statistics for younger white women are higher than you would think, too. Most of my younger coworkers and many that are my age have had children out of wedlock.

When I talk with the teenaged girls I work with (white and black), they usually ask me if I have any kids. I say no, except you all. When they ask why, I tell them because I've never been married. Every single one of them has responded to this with a "that doesn't matter". I usually just say "it matters to me".

So, it's a trend that's been in the black community for a couple of generations, but is catching up in the white demographics, too.

I'm not shocked about this. I would imagine that the statistics for younger white women are higher than you would think, too. Most of my younger coworkers and many that are my age have had children out of wedlock.

When I talk with the teenaged girls I work with (white and black), they usually ask me if I have any kids. I say no, except you all. When they ask why, I tell them because I've never been married. Every single one of them has responded to this with a "that doesn't matter". I usually just say "it matters to me".

So, it's a trend that's been in the black community for a couple of generations, but is catching up in the white demographics, too.

In case you hasn't noticed, the argument that gay couples marrying will "wreck marriage and family" has never been successfully defended.

Well, apparently the Supreme Court is thinking that since the whole idea of gays and marriage hasn't been around longer than cell phones and the Internet, there isn't really enough history to support the POV in either direction.

When the Supremes are struggling with the so-called direction that the gays and their supporters want to take the nation (and are succeeding, I might add, particularly among young people), kinda puts the issue in perspective, doesn't it?

Regardless what the Court says, my own sense of right and wrong tells me gay marriage is wrong. That's all I need. The Supremes can dig around all they want, that doesn't change much in my department.

This was the study we discussed at length here at CU. The study was "controversial" and challenged by gay political activists and liberal academics, but the study held up under the scrutiny of a UT Austin audit. People may not like the results, but it's clear that gay parents, at least from the mid 70's to the early 00's, had children with more economic, emotional, and social issues.

While this fray was going on, a Cal State Northridge professor who was raised by a lesbian parent supports the findings:

With sadness I read "Controversial Gay-Parenting Study Is Severely Flawed, Journal's Audit Finds" (The Chronicle, July 26). The article gave extensive attention to the opinions of Darren E. Sherkat.

Professor Sherkat's critiques imply that any parenting study that includes bisexual parents needs to be immediately disqualified. As an openly bisexual father and son of a lesbian, I am appalled at Professor Sherkat's dismissiveness. The entire rationale for using "LGBT" or "queer" as terms has rested on including bisexuals like me. The same goes for lesbians like my mother, who had children through a marriage that ended in divorce. If we are unsuitable for a sociological data set, then stop claiming our numbers and retire the acronym already. Inexcusable was Professor Sherkat's contemptuous attitude toward the 248 individuals, identified in Mark Regnerus's study, who were raised by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender parents. Whether or not these respondents' life stories are favorable to the agenda set by organizations such as the Human Rights Coalition, people like me who were raised by same-sex couples and now have the maturity and independence to tell our story should not be silenced. The fact that a Catholic sociologist funded by right-wing foundations was the first scholar to show genuine interest in our life challenges, letting us speak as adults, reveals the deficiencies of gay activists and scholars. The latter have thrust far too many minors from LGBT households into the spotlight to advance gay-rights rhetoric, knowing that children are not at liberty or even developed enough to speak sincerely and effectively about what it is like growing up with an LGBT parent.

I was not interviewed in Mark Regnerus's study. He did contact me personally, however, in late July, after coming across some comments I had left on Web sites relating to my experience. My mother and her female partner were my primary guardian figures between 1973 and 1990, when my mother died. I came out as bisexual in 1989 at Yale University. By 1990 I began writing about my rare experience as the son of a lesbian, but nobody wanted to go near my story because it didn't glorify the gay-parenting agenda. In 23 years, though debate about gay issues has raged all around me, nobody—not one person, least of all anyone interested in gay issues—asked me to speak truthfully about my childhood in a gay household. Mark Regnerus was the first person who gave me a chance to speak honestly about how hard it was and how ambivalent I felt about placing other children in such a situation. His tone was respectful, his curiosity well intended, and his courage commendable. Of course it is hard to be raised in a household that is unusual and unlike the homes of one's peers. Just like kids raised in orthodox religious households, kids who are home-schooled, foster kids, or kids who are so wealthy that they are reared by paid nannies, the children of homosexuals have atypical household environments and face challenges in understanding their peers and getting their peers to understand them. Their challenges may result in difficulty adjusting socially, which is what Professor Regnerus discovered in his study. Far from seeing his research as insulting, I see it as affirming. For the first time in my 41 years of life, someone finally acknowledged that the way I grew up was hard and it wasn't my fault.

It is tragic that the moment of affirmation and the chance to speak honestly about my childhood came when Mark Regnerus contacted me, as opposed to one of the many scholars devoted to advocating for LGBT's. But that is how it happened.